Guitarist Chris Mulé and bassist Aaron Wilkinson were playing with guitarist Eric Lindell on tour in San Francisco when Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005. Everything Wilkinson owned was stashed in his van and his roommate's apartment back in Louisiana.

"It was a trip being thousands of miles away, watching it on TV, not knowing what happened to any of your stuff," he says. "After a couple of weeks, you just wrote it off."

Stranded in San Francisco, unable to reach anybody back home, Mulé and Wilkinson gravitated toward spending their days at the Boom Boom Room on Fillmore Street, a San Francisco nightclub that many New Orleans musicians think of as their home away from home in this town. Mulé and Wilkinson were sitting around the club one afternoon, talking about starting a band, the two songwriters comparing song lists, when in walked two other Katrina refugees, bassist Sam Price and drummer Garland Paul.

Wilkinson switched to mandolin ("Sam was better" on bass, he says). Boom Boom Room proprietor Alex Andreas offered the musicians a regular Sunday night slot. They named the group after a wet patch outside of New Orleans.

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When the musicians finally went home more than a year later, they decided to continue as a band in New Orleans and have emerged in the past couple of years as that city's favorite new rock band. A confident, sure-handed mix of clapboard honesty, rugged harmonies and a tough-minded ensemble sound that recalls Little Feat and the Band while always managing to sound like New Orleans, the band retains an enthusiastic following in San Francisco, where the Honey Island Swamp Band returns home Friday to the Boom Boom Room.

"Every time we come to town, people come to see us who were there that first Sunday," says Wilkinson - called "A-Ron" - on the telephone from New Orleans.

"We had a $5 ticket," says Boom Boom Room owner Alex Andreas. "Within two months, they had a steady following. Their style is a combination of things - New Orleans funk, of course, but they can also be almost Bob Dylanesque, and there's some of that Rolling Stones a la 'Black and Blue,' a little bit of reggae. ... People love it in San Francisco."

Although the four musicians knew one another from working the same clubs in New Orleans, they had never played together until they met in San Francisco. But they returned to that highly competitive scene a fully developed band with a roots-rock sound that found an instant home in New Orleans.

"Those were our rehearsals," Wilkinson says. "We were a little rough around the edges. Still are. We were doing pretty well out there. Courtesy FEMA, we were given some assistance with our living expenses. It was a pretty good deal."

Also while in San Francisco, the band recorded several songs at Sausalito's now-defunct Record Plant (where Fleetwood Mac cut "Rumours") that became the first Honey Island Swamp Band EP on their return to New Orleans. After a full album produced by Tom Drummond of Better Than Ezra, the group's second album, last year's "Good to You," has become a staple on the city's community nerve center/FM radio station, WWOZ. The town has embraced the band, whose website describes its music as "Americana meets the bayou."

"We kind of filled a hole," Wilkinson says, "not that there aren't other bands that do what we do. But we are not necessarily the latest in a line of funk bands, although we do take a lot from that. We're more roots rock. We concentrate on the songwriting and the vocals. Turns out there's room for that down here. It's been a nice, easy fit for is. We're thrilled with the way it's going.

"We didn't go into this with any preconceived ideas. We've all been in bands before that tried to manufacture what we have, and it's an uphill battle. It just continues to unfold for us."

They will always remember their beginning in San Francisco. "The Boom Boom Room is our home," he says. "That's where it blossomed into this snowballing thing that's still going. Morale is good when we're coming to San Francisco. We're up on our hind legs."

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